NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday, while dealing with the petitions pending even after six years of filing, posted a batch of pleas challenging the controversial electoral bond scheme for a final hearing on October 31.
Listing the matter for the last day of this month, a bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud with Justices JB Paridwala said the pleas will continue hearing on November 1 if the hearing is not completed on October 31.
The pleas against the scheme were filed in 2017 in the apex court.
Through the electoral bonds, which were introduced in the Finance Act of 2017, registered political parties that have secured not less than 1 per cent of the votes polled in the last Lok Sabha or legislative assembly elections are eligible to receive funding.
As per Petitioner NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), anonymous funding through electoral bonds promotes corruption and violates the citizens’ right to have a corruption-free nation.
It was contended that the identity of the donors could never be known to the public and referred to reservations raised by the Reserve Bank of India and Election Commission to the Scheme.
During the hearing, advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the petitioners said, “This promotes corruption as the source of funding is anonymous, it is violative of Article 21 and the 'non-decision' in the case compounding the problem.”
In one of the previous hearings in March, Senior Advocate Dushyant Dave said that the same is an issue that goes to the core of “our democratic existence” and is “serious”.
According to one of the petitioners, so far Rs 12,000 crore has been paid to political parties through electoral bonds and two-thirds of the amount has gone to one major political party.
Two lawyers were appointed earlier including Neha Rathi, as nodal counsel for ensuring a smooth hearing of the PILs, saying they would coordinate to ensure that a common compilation of judgements and other records are filed.
On January 31, this year, the top court had said the three sets of petitions on the electoral bonds scheme, bringing political parties within the ambit of the Right to Information Act and those challenging amendments in the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act will be heard separately.
The court also said that since the bonds were allowed to be released in 2018, 2019, and 2020 without interruption and there were sufficient safeguards, there was justification to not stay them at the moment.
The court had said it would hear in the third week of March the pleas challenging the laws permitting the funding of political parties through the electoral bond scheme.
Electoral bonds have been pitched as an alternative to cash donations made to political parties as part of efforts to bring transparency to political funding.
Lawyer Bhushan has been seeking urgent listing of the PIL by the apex court and a direction to the Centre not to open any further window for the sale of electoral bonds during the pendency of a case pertaining to funding of political parties and alleged lack of transparency in their bank accounts.
The NGO, which had filed the PIL on the issue of alleged corruption and subversion of democracy through illicit and foreign funding of political parties and lack of transparency in the bank accounts of all political parties, had moved an interim application in March 2021 before the assembly polls in West Bengal and Assam seeking the sale of electoral bonds should not be reopened.
On January 20, 2020, the apex court refused to grant an interim stay on the 2018 Electoral Bonds Scheme and sought responses from the Centre and the Election Commission to an interim application by the NGO seeking a stay on the scheme.
The government notified the Electoral Bond Scheme on January 2, 2018.
According to the provisions of the scheme, electoral bonds may be purchased by a person who is a citizen of India or incorporated or established in India. An individual can buy electoral bonds, either singly or jointly with other individuals.
Only political parties registered under Section 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 and which secured not less than one per cent of votes polled in the last general election to Lok Sabha or the Legislative Assembly of the state are eligible to receive electoral bonds.
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(With inputs from PTI)
